The USA team will need to get to Croatia early so as to spend time scouting the area and adapting to local conditions. This is likely to be a huge financial strain on the team and any assistance in the form of financial support would be greatlyappreciated. All donations will be utilized to support our team as we represent the USA in this World's Competition, an Olympic accredited event.

What is the World Spearfishing Championship?

C.M.A.S. (Confederation Mondiale des Activities Subaquatiques) sponsors a World Spearfishing Championship every two years and usually limits participation to the top 20 of its member countries. CMAS is a worldwide organization for underwater sports currently and has approximately 35 countries as members. Each World Spearfishing Championship is typically held at a different dive location around the World, i.e. Iquique, Chile in 2004, Sines, Portugal in 2006 and Santa Margarita Island, Venezuela in 2008. This year it will be held in Mali Losinj, Croatia on the 14th through the 19th of September 2010.

What happens at a World Spearfishing Championship?

The Worlds are a 2-day championship where divers harvest fish for about 7 hours per day. Each day, the diving is done at a different location. Typically, 20-25 teams qualify to compete at the World Championships. And because too many teams want to participate at the Worlds, sometimes there are regional qualifiers for the World Championships per Continent. The America’s Qualifier is the Pan-American Spearfishing Championship lastly hosted at Isla Margarita, Venezuela in November 2009 for the 2010 Worlds. The World Championships are boat-based meets and each team is allowed to have three divers hunting. The Championships are run somewhat like a mini-Olympics where there are opening ceremonies and a big closing banquet. It is not uncommon for thousands of people to attend the opening ceremony where each team has their own national uniform. At the opening event there is a parade of Nations where each country carries their nations’ flag.

Why are we asking for donations?

These Championships are not about just having great freediving and spearfishing talent as all the U.S. divers have an extreme high degree of talent. It is about preparation and having enough resources (time and money) to be successful. The Worlds top teams in these Championships will spend months training at the site, finding fishy locations (scouting) and understanding everything about the tournament area. Let’s say, the Italian team, always one of the top teams brings 10 divers to the World site and spends 60 days diving there in preparation. That’s 600 full diver days in the water. You can have all the 100 foot freedive capable divers you want, but without scouting time to hunt miles and miles of coastline, you will not break the top 5 teams. The U.S. has never hosted a Worlds, but our top divers have previously won individual honors and finished 2nd multiple times. Our U.S. divers can hang with the very best. Our biggest challenges are the time and money aspect.We seem to "work" more than the rest of the World!Thanks for reading and we all sincerely appreciate your support!

For more information about the team and Underwater Society of America:

Founded by multiple world record holder and the pioneer in freediving education Martin Stepanek. Martin has Sponsored the team with World class freedive training which will be needed to dive the deep depths of Croatia (100+ feet).

Thanks to Carter Lift bags for setting us up with the SPEAR FISHING FLOATS designed to be used by
spear fishermen to bring speared fish to the surface. They lift 25 lbs and can
also be used as small lift bags or as buoys to mark dive locations.
They have a one way mouth inflation valve and an over-pressure valve. They can be
ordered with an optional 38 gram CO2 inflation
cylinder.